Altering your Brand for Specific Markets

Your brand is whatever someone thinks of first when they hear your name. In the worst case scenario your brand will trigger nothing; no memory, no recognition, and no emotion whatsoever. In the best case scenario your brand will trigger positive memories of your product or service.

This is a fairly rough oversimplification however. For companies that operate in multiple markets there are two other extremes: positive misidentification and negative misidentification. I recently visited. Company suffering brutally between the extremes of “non-recognition” and “positive misidentification.”

For the sake of this article let’s call this company Ecks. Ecks makes products that serve several markets very well. These products are not very different tron each other in name, form, or function. When I first heard their name it was starkly unfamiliar. When I searched for them online they were not a member of common LinkedIn groups and their website gave me a very poor impression on their product portfolio.

After spending a week visiting with the company I was completely converted from having a negative skeptical view of the company to having a hugely favorable view. I was downright impressed! Their employees are brilliant and their executive staff are amazngly personable and curious. They should clearly be doing double their present revenue.

The end result is that they need to embark upon a branding campaign. Not an expensive one. Ecks needs to build an online presence slowly with high value content being shared. A few of the recommendations I gave are these:

Create a company profile on LinkedIn

Participate in LinkedIn polls and questions by contributing intelligent opinions and offering advice and solutions

Build a personal website; separate from the main website that showcases the people inside the company and their amazing accomplishments

Get involved on other websites in their industry

Tell their story!

Ecks has an amazing story to tell about their brilliant people and their fantastic accomplishments but they’re hiding behind a cold corporate face. In an age when faces corporations are the norm, a successful mom-and-pop should draw an enthusiastic following… especially when they have the best products and services in the industry.